A new year can be daunting for anyone involved in running a business: there are huge targets to reach and a never-ending list of new competitors springing up every other week with more and more outlandish concepts. How to stay on top of the game? Check out our 2018 hospitality trends for new ideas – knowing you though, you’re probably implementing a few of these already!

Online Reservations Expanding Hospitality Reach

Airbnb, the popular room-rental app, recently announced they will be rolling out restaurant reservations to guests in the USA. The company strategically invested in reservation app Resy for $13 million a year ago and expands on its restaurant recommendations in their Trips section.

Whilst online reservations are nothing new, this move marks Airbnb’s move into another hospitality area and paving the way for it to become the next, big travel agency.

SevenRooms, one of our reservation partners, recently completed a round of funding which saw a huge $8 million raised – a huge chunk of money that is a reliable indicator of how profitable online reservations are. These moves will no doubt encourage more and more businesses to get their reservation system online this year – luckily this is something TISSL can assist with!

Chasing Millennials

The industry will continue to chase this group whose buying power grows every day. Millennials are notorious for changing their minds as often as they switch between social media networks. Targeting this audience can often be difficult but the key is to offer them the right experience at the right time (hence the popularity of ‘pop-up’ instillations). Targeting millennials on the devices and platforms they use in order to increase foot traffic will continue to grow and be important for all in the industry.

Over the next year we predict that more restaurants will offer more than just dining to this audience and the marketing focus will continue to grow on digital platforms used by this market.

Strategising Post-Terrorism/Natural Disasters

Leaders in the hospitality industry will have to come up with new, creative ideas to attract bookings in a world left shaken by terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Hotels look to hosting events and meetings and forming attractive packages to make up the numbers and to reform trust in the eyes of the public.

To be blunt: there will be a short-term loss as there was post-9/11 and post-hurricanes but with a good marketing strategy these numbers should even out eventually.

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The Food

Last, but certainly not least, we come to the biggest food trend predicted for this year: comfort food. We don’t just mean mum’s Sunday roasts, or consuming entire tubs of ice cream; we’re talking restaurants taking this to the next level with, as Forbes so succinctly describes it: “mood-based offerings”. This plays on the trends that have sprung up around health awareness in the last few years as well as a nostalgic yearning millennials (that group, again!) have for anything reminiscent of their childhood and home.

Restaurants will offer meals to suit any mood: desserts, plant-based, paleo, sugar-free, pre- and post-workout energisers, you name it! Waitrose has gone to the extent of framing this as the ‘fourth meal’; works for us as we’ll do anything for some extra yummy food!

There are hundreds more trends predicted for this year but these are the main ones we think will be popping up all over the hospitality industry this year. We can’t wait to see all of these come to life!